


The Maze Runner - If Teresa Had Died Before Waking Up

by RaceWingz



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24046057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaceWingz/pseuds/RaceWingz
Summary: What would have changed if Teresa had died before she came out of her coma-like state? Here is my strange interpretation on what could have happened. Quite sensitive theme mentioned partway through the fic.
Relationships: Newt/Thomas (Maze Runner)
Kudos: 11





	The Maze Runner - If Teresa Had Died Before Waking Up

Deafening the ears of the Gladers, the box alarm still rang. As Alby and Newt steadily approached from the homestead, the confusion hit Thomas like a thump to the chest. He was sure that Newt told him the day before that only one green bean entered the Glade per month yet, the bells were clear to him and all the others. What was going on? A sudden silence awaited as the box arrived, shortly replaced with gasps of horror from the boys standing closest.  
A thundering view called Thomas forward and consequently, giant glares followers, tracing him every step as he walked up to a furious Alby. As Newt and Alby heaved the greenie out of the box, the same familiar scene of grief barged back into him. The grief of the thing he had experienced only yesterday. As he finally saw the newest victim of the glade, his brain stopped for a second. Thomas froze in fear of what lay before him. Slowly but surely, the silence surrounding Thomas shook him up for the few seconds before he was bombarded with questions. Before he was a pale, lifeless girl...  
A girl? Thomas had only just come to realise that until now, he had been surrounded by boys but now he stood before a girl. Quite a pretty girl. Peacefully she lay there, digging her way into Thomas’ heart until suddenly, she arose. She bolted upright and spoke hastily. She had but a few chilling words. She said, “everything is going to change”. At that moment, Thomas felt the heavy stare of Gally behind him. It shook him down to the spine as the girl collapsed again, before being rushed off to the homestead by the med-jacks.  
The glaring intensified from all of the Gladers as Newt and Alby started asking questions. Thomas was still not yet brave enough to answer, petrified by the thought of what the ‘change’ could mean. From fear, he ran off, attempting to hide from what was going on around him. He knew this girl somehow, but while she was in a coma-like state, he couldn’t explore those thoughts and feelings.  
A voice suddenly appeared. Silky and smooth it sounded like the voice of an angel but confused Thomas. It was a girl’s voice. Could it be the voice of the girl that arrived earlier? Her soft words came to me like they knew each other previously, but he couldn’t explain the theory. He couldn’t get the strange girl from her mind. The memory from earlier on was only challenged by the black holes of Ben when he attacked me. The fierce look in his eyes and his demon chant. The blood that peacefully tricked down his cheek from the bow that had killed him. The whole drama between Thomas and the greenie and the cold threats from Ben in this. Suddenly, Thomas woke up.  
His head was crammed with emotion and he found it hard to deal with. Thomas had more questions, infinite questions bursting out of his mind like water in a balloon yet, they all stayed concealed for the first time since he entered the Glade. Chuck was still snoring. Surely the voices in his head were a dream? They had to be. Thomas did not know whether to open up to Alby about this but decided that he would keep quiet as the Gladers already had the opinion that Thomas was nuts and he didn’t want to establish that opinion further. Newt called him to sit with the mysterious female as she lay peacefully in sleep. She was awfully pretty.  
The thoughts came back again, or he thought they were thoughts. The timid voice of a girl. She was talking to him. Thomas let out a gasp of fright as she said her name. She simply said “Teresa”. Who was she? It no longer felt like just a thought. Now, it felt real and Thomas did not know how to process it. It was an odd feeling that Thomas somehow recognised but he didn’t know how to reply to the message. Extraordinary thoughts went through Thomas’ head as he heard her say his name. A weak “Thomas” was heard. He shrieked and Newt jolted from his seat. Thomas tried to explain it to Newt but couldn’t get the words out. Was he going crazy? As Newt stared blankly at Thomas the voice continued, “Tom, we’re the last ones. It’ll end soon, it has to”, followed by “don’t freak out on me”. Thomas cupped his hands over his ears as if to block out the voices in his head from the girl. This Teresa was somewhat familiar but in a very strange way which he still couldn’t understand.  
Newt began questioning Thomas about what he was experiencing. They could be close to establishing a possible solution to why they were there. It could all be down to the two newest greenies. She then told Thomas that her memory was fading and that she was sent as a trigger for the end. She also mentioned passing some sort of trials. He couldn’t take it anymore. Teresa spoke about waking up too and told Tom that they did this to them. Thomas wondered what she meant by them doing this to the Gladers. The memory loss and the confusion and the mess of the situation proved too much and Thomas ran to get away from the current situation. The last thing he could remember was waking up the next morning.  
Chuck approached and started a conversation over one of Frypan’s breakfasts. Thomas struggled to talk to Chuck, even with the friendly enthusiasm he always brought. He continued, saying that Newt had told them not to disturb him as he’d gone through a lot. Thomas’ constant thoughts about Teresa were suddenly replaced with pure respect for Newt, but only for a matter of seconds. He knew that he must go back to Teresa and find out more information or at least an explanation for what she’d said before. Swiftly, he slid into the homestead and jumped up the stairs. Calmly, he went back into Alby’s room, cautiously greeting him as he lay in recovery from the dreaded changing. Newt was there by his side, he looked like didn’t want to lead the Gladers. To Tom, he was the perfect helper in the big team of Gladers, not quite a leader but still essential for the team.  
After a quick conversation, Thomas rushed into the next room to see if the med-jacks had an update on Teresa. Briskly the door swung open and I saw Teresa lying there still, her hair dark and pearly. She lay like a princess, so innocent and sweet. Thomas couldn’t believe that was how he was describing her, he didn’t even know her, or at least he didn’t think so. A quick consultation with Clint brought Tom to tears. Clint detailed that Teresa may never wake up. Tom didn’t have long before he needed to go out to the maze with Minho so he hurried to her and hugged her still body. Nobody knew when she was going to wake up. She could surprise them all and be up and ready by the time he had finished his runner training.  
Shockingly, he jumped as he heard his name being called. It was Minho! He was ready to start my training to potentially become a runner. I rushed down the stairs and we headed off into the eighth quadrant. He learned a lot more about the maze than he had learned during that awful night. Thomas felt a burning feeling in his head as they were heading back to the Glade. They were on the last passage, Newt was waiting for them on the other side for updates on his first training day when suddenly, Tom collapsed. His head, through the steady unconscious thoughts, were full of screaming. Screaming from Teresa. He freaked out.  
Thomas woke up in the deep darkness of one of the med-jack rooms of the homestead. He was dragged from the maze by the collective effort of Newt and Minho before the med-jacks came to rush him to the homestead. He awoke to see Minho and Newt eagerly waiting for him to wake. They jumped up when Tom opened his eyes. “Gosh shuck face, are you ok?”. It was Minho speaking. Tom leapt up out of bed and rushed to the door. He was met by the distinctly friendly voice saying “Hey Tommy, you’ve got to stay in bed, med-jack orders”. Thomas rushed past him and ran to Teresa’s room. He jumped onto her empty bed and shrieked with fear for her.  
Newt followed with a slick pace and dragged him back to bed. He then sat at the corner of the room and gave the announces the depressing news to Tommy. “Hey Tom, the changing does strange things to you ya know”. Newt was trying to hold back tears as he spoke. “Well…” Newt was affected by what had happened. “Alby went on some sort of rampage. He saw something in his changing. Think of Ben on your second day. Only this time, Alby succeeded”. Thomas sank into his bed, did he lose his newfound friend? “Don’t worry about it shuck face, you never even spoke to her properly”. Thomas was shocked but could do nothing but sink further into the depression he felt. Newt continued “and as a group, us keepers have decided that Alby should have the same punishment as Ben. He will be left for the grievers”.  
Later that night, there was a similar ceremony like that of Ben just days before. Alby was connected to the cone and trapped in the maze as the doors closed. Newt came the closest to crying he ever could without crying. His best friend and lead was now griever food. Now, Newt had the responsibility of a leader and a deputy would need to be established pretty quickly due to the speed that the situation kept changing in.  
The next morning, a gathering was held. It consisted of every keeper in the glade and Thomas. They all had to decide on what they were going to do about leadership in the Glade. With Alby gone, the title of leader was now left to Newt but there were many arguments about who would become the deputy leader. Minho suggested that Thomas should take up the responsibility to the amusement of Gally and Winston. Frypan also agreed with Minho. The rest of the keepers were evenly split. Some of them argued that the deputy leader should be one of the keepers as they have been there much longer and have leadership experience. Others argued that when Thomas had to bravery to save Alby and come up with a strategy to survive with the grievers, it showed that he had great leadership skills. Also, they argued that he had no experience in any other job if he had to take over from another keeper (well, any other job apart from runner). It was eventually decided that Thomas and Minho would swap roles weekly. One week, Thomas would act as deputy leader and take care of problems in the Glade. Minho would be the runner for section eight of the maze. The next week the roles would reverse but every night, they would get together and discuss changes in the maze pattern.  
They also discussed the mysterious girl who only told her name to Tom, somehow telepathically. When Newt first said her name, Gally had suddenly blown up. His short fuse was not prepared for this kind of situation. Gally started shouting “I SAW THEM! IT IS ALL THEIR FAULT! WHO CARES IF SHE DIED, IT MEANS THERE’S ONLY THOMAS LEFT TO DIE TO ENSURE OUR SAFETY!” Thomas was unsure was to say at that moment. As Gally stood up to approach him he was grabbed by the other keepers. Newt tried to snap some sense into him but it wasn’t working. He continued to make threats to Thomas, so much so that he was ordered out of the gathering. Thomas finished off by saying that he felt like part of him was missing without her.  
Blinding all of the Gladers in its cool, misty wrath, the sky turned grey. The sun had disappeared but nobody knew where. Minho and Thomas went back into the maze together to map out the changes in the maze pattern. A look of concern on the faces of both boys turned to total horror when they discovered that the pattern of the maze had not changed that night. The number of grievers had seemed to increase too, boosting suspicion of the end. They came back to the Glade with half an hour before the doors were due to close. They went straight away to inform Newt of their discovery. They also discussed what information Teresa could have had about how to get out of the maze. They established that they needed more information quickly, information that Teresa probably had. Hastily, a plan was formulated. It involved the impossible.  
As the half-hour drew to an end, there wasn’t the scraping that usually came from the doors closing. Instead, the doors laid wide open as the night drew in. The only sound anyone could hear was the intense panicking of the Gladers as they realised at that moment that if they didn’t quickly gather at the homestead, they'd be griever food. In preparation, the runners emptied the shelves of supplies in the map room and grabbed the maps to search for any clues they could have missed. Thomas helped too as trainee runner. They grabbed all of the weapons, backpacks and clothing items they had in storage and transferred it all to the homestead.  
Newt organised the homestead so that there was at least one keeper per room. There were enough weapons for each keeper to be able to defend the people in their rooms plus many extra for the Gladers. They were prepared for battle. They must survive somehow but they still hadn’t established a way out. The only thing closest to an exit was the cliff and the thought of that was like suicide. All of the Gladers chipped in while the keepers were discussing an action plan to board up all of the doors and windows of the homestead. It is the only way that safety would be possible. Maybe Teresa knew the link between the maze and the creators. The confusion was humiliating.  
As the last boards were beings hammered up, the loud, crunching, whirring warnings of the grievers came close. They could hear the screech of engines as the whirring came closer. Thomas, Minho and Newt were in one of the upstairs rooms and Gally, Winston and another keeper in the other rooms. Chuck had been avoiding Thomas with a familiar feeling that he may be crazy, being the only one who had any contact with Teresa before she died, if she even was called Teresa. As one of the most recent greenies (except for Tom and Teresa) he was being closely guarded by Frypan and a group of keepers who Thomas didn’t know the names of.  
In the room that Thomas was in, there came a sudden crunching. The sound swiftly dug into the Gladers ears like they were being directly scraped with sandpaper. It appeared that the griever was climbing the walls to access the room that Tom was in. He was sure that all the other rooms had the same thing going on. This noisy griever was scraping up the wall of the homestead until it got to a boarded-up window. The Gladers had fled to the furthest wall from the enemy. Suddenly, the door burst open with a thud and Gally ran in. He grabbed Thomas uttering the words “now to get what you deserve Greenie”. Gally dragged Thomas to where the griever was, desperately trying to gain entry into the homestead room. The griever was almost through and Thomas was almost a goner until Minho ran up and grabbed Thomas and began to fight Gally. Minho grabbed Gally by the neck and sacrificed him to the griever. Strangely, this caused all of the grievers to retreat to the maze.  
When morning finally came, everyone met downstairs. We came to realise that one person would be lost per night until we either escape or all die. This came as a shock to most of the Gladers and caused a lot of panic among them. At the time where the sun used to rise, Tom and Minho went back out to the maze to explore further and try to find something new. The only place that had never been fully explored was the cliff so they headed that way to search for new clues though they were unsure what they could be. They had almost arrived at the cliff when a griever suddenly appeared. Thomas was stung by the griever and collapsed to the ground. Minho grabbed his arm and started dragging his weak body away from the whirring fiend. He ran and lost the griever. As Thomas limply held on to his life, Minho picked him up and finally returned to the Glade.  
Newt met them there and was panic-stricken when he’d seen that Thomas was stung. Minho rushed back saying “slint head griever appeared out of nowhere and shucking stung him”. The med-jacks rushed forward and quickly took Thomas to the prison cell between the deadheads and the homestead. He was quickly given grief serum and then the pain began. A flash of images came. The wrenching and the burning and the oozing all over his body. A thousand images popped up all at once. The main component in most of them was Teresa. The same thoughts pounded Thomas’ head. The same dreaded feeling that without Teresa, they were all going to die in the maze. She had said before that Thomas had some role in causing so much suffering.  
Though his mind filled with pictures, nothing was clear enough to understand. Thomas got nowhere with trying to find an answer to the maze. Suddenly, a breath of depression flew over him. Though he was already knocked out from the serum, Thomas’ head was now filled with so many new thoughts and feelings that he thought he was going to collapse, possibly die. Thomas woke up with Newt by his side. It was the friendly kind of voice that Thomas dreamt of waking up to however, he still felt awful from the dire effects of the changing. That was an experience he’d never forget. “How long have I been out man?” Thomas quietly asked. “a full week Tommy, med-jacks thought you were never going to wake up. It appears you had an unusually long changing” Thomas joked with Newt for a couple of minutes before the same depressed feelings came back over him. It didn’t help that his veins still stook out a bright green and his head was still pounding from the medicine but Thomas had more complex thoughts going on in addition to the stress of the changing.  
He was placed in the Glade where nobody seemed to like him. The only friend he had at the start is ignoring him and won’t speak to him. Thomas had some sort of link with Teresa and she was murdered by someone he trusted the most. He was almost killed by a crazy madman and Thomas witnessed him getting killed. So many more thoughts shot through Thomas’ mind like rockets, finding the perfect place to crash. Newt was visibly concerned but Thomas brushed it off.  
Thomas and Newt came out of the cell and everyone seemed shocked to see Thomas alive. They started asking questions about what he saw in the changing but the images were so distant to Thomas that he stood there silent until all of a sudden, he rushed out the door. Even the sweet voice of Newt couldn’t bring him back. Thomas ran over to the box, ready to do the unexpected. He couldn’t take it any longer. He thought he might as well die now as it will reduce the suffering of so many. Thomas wouldn’t have to put up with the like of Chuck who thought he was completely barmy for the telepathy he had with Teresa before she died.  
Thomas was about to leap down the box shaft when all of a sudden, Newt caught up with him. He sounded so desperate. He tried every way possible to convince Thomas not to jump but nothing was convincing him. That was until suddenly Thomas felt Newt’s warm lips touch his own. It was something that Thomas never imagined doing but it felt so right. Thomas had always had a thing for Newt but just dismissed it for the sake of it. He always thought that Newt would never like him but when their lips met, all of Thomas’ worries went away. It gave Thomas new confidence to find and escape route to the maze.  
They walked back to the homestead together, holding hands all the way. They were greeted outside by Minho, who was surprisingly excited. “hey shuck face, how are ya doing?”. Thomas looked down, clearly signalling that he doesn’t want to talk about it. “well slint head, when you were boggling in your changing you were sleep talking. Never seen it before from someone who’s been stung but you’ve solved our maze issue”. Thomas stared blankly, very confused about what Minho was on about. Minho explained that in a deep changing sleep, Thomas instructed them to compare the maps of each area with each other for each day to establish a code. Tom also babbled about a portal to griever hell accessed by the cliff and a keypad to type the code into.  
Thomas was gobsmacked by what he had just heard. He thought that the information that jumped into his head during the changing was not understandable, let alone the fact that he spoke aloud and revealed the answer they’d been spending years trying to find. Minho then detailed that they had already established the code for him and developed an action plan. The next day was when they were going to take action. They couldn’t let more people die for much longer.  
A determined as ever, the remaining Gladers gathered up resources to go into the maze. They grabbed weapons and food and grief serum and ropes for access to the exit through the cliff. They ventured out into the maze to find the grievers waiting for them. The keepers led the attack as Thomas prepared to access the important exit room. He ran corner after corner of war between the Gladers and the grievers until he got to the pit safely. Thomas scrambled to put the code in but kept misspelling due to pressure. He knew that at this point, every second counted and possibly prevented another Glader being killed. He finally managed to correctly place the code in and then the grievers suddenly died off and disappeared. The number of Gladers was dramatically down and they all climbed through the exit to escape.  
The tunnel was dark as night and they couldn’t see where they were going but they knew that past the darkness was a bright future and a haven. When they reached the end of the dark tunnel, they came out to a room full of people in strange white coats. They all filed out and Newt and Thomas instantly held hands as soon as they could to support each other. It was also strange because as the last Gladers were filing in, Gally and another woman dressed in a long, white coat appeared in the room. Minho hurled the usual insults at Gally before suddenly, a knife was flying in the air towards Thomas.  
The blade soared into Thomas’ chest and he suddenly collapsed in pain and desperation. New collapsed on his hands and knees, sobbing to give him support. A little romance may have sparked between Newt and Thomas but their time together was ending too early. Thomas gave Newt a gift, a message in a bottle, as a memento to always keep going on in life and remember the good times they had together. As Thomas took his last breaths, Newts was by his side comforting him. He was heartbroken and strived to get revenge for this awful death that ripped him up. The people who sent them there better be ready!


End file.
